What Is PhotoReading?

Photoreading is an enhanced reading strategy developed by Paul Scheele that will enable you to extract more information out of your reading materials in a shorter amount of time.

Courses in this photo reading strategy is offered by Learning Strategies Corporation
in the form of public course seminars and home self-study courses.

The home self-study course is not just a recording of the live seminar. Rather it is redeveloped and designed specifically for self-learning. It is this home course that the below article is based.

How PhotoReading Works

Photo reading is not speed reading. Speed reading involves drills to make your eyes move faster. Photoreading is to extract out the important information from the reading more quickly. In photoreading, you do not need to actually need to consciously “read” every word. Your sub-conscious already read it for you.

The course is not hard work. In fact, you can not and should not “work hard” at this. Because you are employing the power of the sub-conscious mind. Paul Scheele say you have to learn to let go and let the sub-conscious mind do its work.

By some estimates, the eyes and brain take in about 10 million bits of information per seconds unconsciously, but your conscious mind only perceive 40 bits of information per second. The actual number varies, but the bottom line is that you perceive only a small fraction of all the information that your brain takes in. When you read, your sub-conscious mind already took in the word a quarter of a second before your conscious mind “read” the word.

In the course there will be a series of exercise where you have to perform some reading for a specific time. Scheele says that you have to follow strictly the timing of the reading. You will need an egg timer or other count-down timer that will ring after say 3 minutes or however long that particular exercise is. I like to use the online egg timer at online-stopwatch.com.

The learning strategy involves a multi-pass technique. You make multiple passes through the reading material, where each pass will let you “activate” more and more of the material. This is designed so that we can get the most out of the material within a given amount of time. Depending on the reason for your reading the material and its complexity, you may need more or less passes.

One thing is for sure, photoreading one pass is still many times better than no reading at all. Have you ever bought some books that you plan on reading. And the stack of book has been left unread in a pile on your desk for a couple of months. In our time-constraint society, we simply do not have time to read every single word that comes our way. The strategy gives us the next best thing, which is to extract as much out in the given amount of time that we do have (whatever amount of time that happens to be).

Then whenever you happen to have more time (it may be never), you can always go back and re-read and re-activate the material. Since you had gone through already the first pass, the second pass will go fast and you will get more out of it.

The PhotoReading technique

The PhotoReading technique involves 5 steps:

1. Prepare: In this step you prepare your mind to be in the ideal state for learning using relaxation techniques to get into relaxed alertness. You also focus on the purpose of the reading.

2. Preview: You take a wide view to get a sense of the structure of the reading material.

3. Photoread: This is the step where you let your subconscious mind and your whole mind do the work for you — flipping through the pages (but not actually consciously reading yet).

4. Postview: You go through the material finding trigger words and formulating questions.

5. Activate: After letting your mind incubate the material that it had absorbed, this is the step where you bring the essential information to your conscious memory. It involves techniques such as Super reading, skittering, mind mapping, and rapid reading.

Super reading is similar to speed reading. And rapid reading is similar to regular reading that we are all familiar with. You can apply these techniques in any order and use each of them appropriately depending on them the complexity of the material and the purpose of your reading.

Mind Mapping

A note-taking technique that is taught in the course that is quite useful is called “mind mapping”. It is a visual diagramming method of taking notes. You use key terms only and put the core concept in the center of the page with connecting lines radiating from it to supporting keywords. You can see a example of a mind map on page 63 of the fourth edition of the Photoreading book (included in the home self-study course). Just by looking at the mind map, one is able to see the entire outline of the material and how certain concepts are connected to another. By remembering the mind map picture, one would remember all the key points of the material. It makes remembering materials very easy.

Speaking of memory… The home study course also includes “Memory Supercharger” paraliminal audio CD. Paraliminal means “beyond the threashold of conscious awareness”. Using relaxation techniques, your mind will receive positive affirmations to strengthen your memory. It is designed to be used with stereo headphones (headphones not included) as multiple messages can be piped to your left and right ears. But do not listen while driving or operating heavy machinery, because you may be asked to close your eyes at times as part of the relaxation steps.

Course Materials

There are two versions of the PhotoReading self-study course that can be order at Learning Strategies Corporation website

The classic version consists of …

• eight audio CDs with accompanying workbook manual
• the fourth edition “Photoreading” book by Paul Scheele
• the “Natural Brilliance” book by Paul Scheele
• Webster’s pocket dictionary
• memory supercharger paraliminal audio CD

All the CDs are taught and narrated by Paul Scheele himself.

The deluxe version consists of everything in the classic version plus a “PhotoReading Results Supercharger” 3-DVD Pack and the “PhotoReading Activator Paraliminal” audio CD.

Note:

This article was written in March 2011 in is opinion at the time of the writing. Author has received complimentary course material from publisher and may receive compensation from display ads and links within that page.